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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6763281" data-attributes="member: 6777454">You think every story where people use evil can't result in anything good.China was once not a single country, but several countries divided against one another in nearly constant warfare. Only the most ruthless, savage and sadistic of people rose to the top of the empire and through craven acts of greed for power, through betrayal and carnage they... united the nations and peoples spreading civilization bringing peace and order while raising the standard of living for everyone who survived those wars.The Greeks and Romans were the first seeds of real civilization in Europe after the collapse or stagnation of the Egyptian, Sumerian and Persian empires. For reasons no other than greed and to prove themselves and increase their rank and power, they spread their borders and slaughtered and subjegated all they came across. The result was putting an end to tribal warfare, the spreading of peace and the creation of the seeds of many of the major cities that exist today and the creation of trade routes between them.The Europeans who came to the Americas spread disease (sometimes intentionally), slaughtered, enslaved, tortured and robbed the people they came across on the two continents. They quite gleefully did some of the most horrific and things one group of humans has ever done to another, engaging in likely the largest genocide in all of human history. They then sailed to another continent to capture and purchase other humans to bring back and put to work building their new nations. The result as a land of countries that stood as beacons of freedom and refuges for immigrants from around the globe, a land of opportunity that inspired the freedoms that all the first world nations enjoy today. And make no mistake about it-- all those freedoms that were advanced were done almost exclusively for the selfish interests of those that were advancing them.And those people who were imported as slaves? Bad as they may feel they have it, they are considerably better off than those who stayed in Africa.In Japan during a time of turmoil and chaos with warlords forcing everyone to war against one another for their own selfish ends, it was a guy so wicked and monstrous that to this day he is known as "the demon king" who ultimately did almost all the work to unite it into a single nation once again. And ultimately he was killed by a traitor who was killed by a loyal officer to him whose family was slaughtered to the last person by the person who ultimately took the reigns of the nation and... his dynasty went on to bring to the land a long age of peace and prosperity for nearly everyone, an age that is still looked upon fondly and romantically today and was brought to an end not by internal insurrection but by foreigners sailing into port with ships vastly more technologically advanced than anything they had.Ending the Nazi march across Europe and the Japanese conquering of the Asian/Pacific area involved napalming neighborhoods of common, innocent civilizations, burning down everything they had to their names and roasting hundreds of thousands alive in their homes for no reason but the nation they happened to belong to. It also involved testing a weapon so nightmarish that it has never been used beyond these two tests upon civilians in two cities... the disturbing results of which is pretty much why it has never again been used against anyone despite making ones that were a thousand fold more powerful.These were evils on a grand scale and they all resulted in far more good than they did evil and the people who committed them were rewarded greatly, and many are held up as heroes to this day. There is even a major national holiday in the U.S. to celebrate the craven pirate who first sailed to America and enslaved the locals, forcing them to mine gold for him and chopping off their limbs if they refused.So don't tell me there are no stories of people who do great evil being heroes or that evil acts never result in good in the long term. History is almost nothing but page after page after page of people being evil and yet it ultimately resulting in good and beneficial results, particularly for those who committed the acts. To such an extent that it is pretty certain that all of our existences as we know them are only possible because of evil being done and any good we ever do in life has been enabled only by the evil acts of countless who came before us.Now, you may go to great lengths to make your game world some childish G-rated affair with simple morals and simple answers and clear solutions to everything. You have probably never required your players to make a hard decision. Yours probably isn't the game where after brutalizing every Goblin in their way as they opportunistically sack this "dungeon" they came across, they open a door and find the nursery filled with small children and babies and realize they are now in the position where they either need to choose to kill them all here and now, leave them to starve to death as you have taken the life of nearly every adult in the tribe and scattered the rest or undertake the arduous task of somehow transporting them somewhere safe to be raised knowing that they will probably just be killed off as vermin or abused if you deliver them to your own peoples.You probably never presented the opportunity to your players the opportunity to stop the Orcs by preemptively attacking their homes, slaughtering their farmers and burning their farms and food supplies down thus starving their entire tribes, including the noncombatants and peaceful ones.Likely you never had that hook where there was going to be an assassination on a king which would certainly lead to chaos and war and your players caught a Drow who knew when, how and where it was going to happen and thus could likely only find out by brutalizing, torturing and mutilating her beyond what even a Drow would expect in order to get her to give up the information before the attack happens and have a chance to stop it (or at least use psychic powers and magic to mentally violate her into giving up the info).Or maybe just the case where you have beaten a group of enemies and they have surrendered and you have the opportunity to execute them now... well knowing that the last three times you spared anyone, they came back later and did far more harm to you and you can be pretty certain these ones will do harm to you and maybe even kill one of your party if allowed to live and regroup and rearm themselves and set up an ambush or if you drag them along and they get free of their chains while you are asleep.... not that you even really have a place to bring them even if you chained them and took them with you.Or if these sorts of situations came up, you probably hand-waved it and decided it wasn't evil so long as you were doing it to your current enemies-- especially if they were "monsters". Which is just cheating and displays some of the ugliest aspects of humanity.And further twisting everything from its logical and rational conclusions in order to enforce your own morality onto the game rather than having various actions is just something not every DM would stoop to. Most DMs are quite willing to let actions result in the sort of things they would realistically result in without some outside moral force trying to punish people for doing things the "wrong way".In fact, if you played with a DM who did enough "gotcha" moments to punish you for being good aligned where the obvious solution isn't going to work or doing the "right" thing is just not possible, I have to imagine that you would start wanting to play Neutral or Evil characters as well just to have that freedom of choice to do the wrong thing or do the right thing for the wrong reason and not worry about these sorts of "gotcha" tricks.</blockquote>

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